County forensic examiner caught up in controversy over 2004 execution
Hidalgo County’s chief forensic pathologist will join a state body charged with investigating negligence and misconduct at Texas’ crime labs, Gov. Rick Perry said last week.
But the appointment of Dr. Norma Jean Farley has erupted into a controversy that has critics questioning the governor’s decision to shake up the membership of the eight-person panel.
On Wednesday — two days before the Texas Forensic Science Commission was set to examine a dubious arson investigation used to sentence a Corsicana man to death — Perry announced he would replace three of the panel’s members. The newly appointed chairman canceled the Friday meeting to give new members time to review the case.
“I’m honored to be selected for this,” Farley said Friday. “But somehow I got caught in the middle of this argument.”
The case of Cameron Todd Willingham has recently drawn attention from national media outlets ranging from CNN to The New Yorker magazine as well as death penalty opponents, who consider it one of the most likely instances in decades of an innocent man being put to death.
Convicted in 1992 of setting a house fire that killed his three daughters, Willingham maintained his innocence up until his execution in 2004.
Perry has repeatedly said he was convinced of Willingham’s guilt when he refused to commute the man’s sentence. The governor described his decision to appoint new members to the commission as “pretty standard business as usual,” The Associated Press reported last week.
Commission chairman and Austin defense attorney Sam Bassett, Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Alan Levy and forensic scientist Aliece Watts all had terms set to expire Sept. 1 — although at least Bassett had requested another appointment, he said Friday.
They will be replaced by Farley, Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley and a defense attorney yet to be named by the governor.
“It was disappointing,” Bassett said of his dismissal. “I’m concerned that the timing came so close to the meeting. So many people had worked so hard to prepare for this.”
Bassett refused to speculate on the governor’s motivation in removing him from the panel, but Barry Scheck — co-director of the New York-based Innocence Project — compared Perry’s move to one that President Richard Nixon made in 1973.
“Rather than let this important hearing go forward and the report be heard, the governor fires the independent chairman and two other members of this commission,” Scheck said in a written statement. “It’s like Nixon firing (special prosecutor) Archibald Cox to avoid turning over the Watergate tapes.”
Scheck’s organization has helped overturn dozens of Texas convictions using newly analyzed DNA evidence. It is one of several groups that have examined the Willingham case over the past several years and come to the conclusion that his conviction hinged on an arson report that amounts to “junk science.”
Independent arson expert Craig Beyler reviewed the case for the Forensic Science Commission and was scheduled to present his report on Friday. In it he states the previous investigation is “hardly consistent with a scientific mind-set and is more characteristic of mystics or psychics.”
Even the Navarro County prosecutors who secured Willingham’s conviction have conceded the original arson investigation was flawed but have since held that plenty of other evidence existed to convict him.
Farley said Friday that she learned of her appointment to the commission Sept. 30 and has been caught off guard by the political conflagration that followed it. While the panel has no authority to find Willingham’s guilt or innocence, she is eager to give the case another look.
“I’ll look at anything that comes our way, fair and impartially,” she said.
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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.
